SvobodaToday

VISUAL REPORTS

Supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine's Odesa Oblast, managed to get him through a Polish-Ukrainian border crossing near the village of Shehyni in Ukraine late on September 10.

Activists in Odesa used sledgehammers to demolish a construction site they said threatened to destroy the region’s historic “House With One Wall.” Although the construction was legal, authorities announced after the incident that they were suspending further building on the site. (over 829k views on Current Time TV Facebook)

Dramatic footage obtained by RFE/RL's Turkmen Service shows water and mud raging through the village of Dowgala on August 10. The government has sought to conceal news of the mudslide, which killed at least 25 persons, as Turkmenistan prepares to host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.

The ruling United Russia party has dominated a slew of regional and local elections marked by low turnout and claims of voter suppression, but early results suggest that liberal opposition candidates have gained a toehold in Moscow.

The preserve of local budget allocations, trash removal, and communal-stairwell renovations, municipal politics seldom stirs interest. But a surge of candidates this year, including more than 1,000 backed by the opposition Yabloko party, has led the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper to dub local politics the "fashionable trend of the Moscow summer."

Ivan Nepomnyashchikh, the last Russian activist imprisoned following the “Bolotnaya” clashes that erupted on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration in 2012, has left the country and landed in Prague, en route to the U.S.

A court in Ukraine's Russian-controlled Crimea region has sentenced prominent Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz to eight years in prison after finding him guilty of organizing an illegal demonstration in Simferopol in February 2014.

Belarus has denied entry visas to six Lithuanian lawmakers planning to participate in a roundtable on regional security in Minsk organized by Belarus’s opposition United Civil Party. The deputies are expected to take part in the discussion via video conference. (Belarus Service)